II°H 
 
■ CB 155 
 I -B25 
 
 HUMAN 
 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 Is* 
 
 BY 
 
 
 1 
 
 JOSEPH BARKER 
 
 WM. COL FOURTH ST. 
 
 1858. 
 
 - 
 
I 
 
 CB» 
 
 HUMAN PROGRESS 
 
 By 
 JOSEPH BARKER. 
 
 There are three opinions with regard to human affairs : 
 
 1. The first, that they are continually getting worse. 
 
 2. The second, that they are stationary. 
 
 3. The third, that they are evermore progressing or im- 
 proving. 
 
 1. The first opinion is the most ancient. We find it in 
 the oldest writings that have come down to our times. The 
 Poets of Greece and Rome, sing of a time when men were 
 all healthy and strong, virtuous and happy, and lived, with- 
 out care and without pain, to a good old age, — a time when 
 the oppressive heat of summer, and the terrible rigors o 
 winter were alike unknown, and when the earth yielded 
 without culture, whatever was needful to the support and 
 comfort of her children. We meet with similar representa- 
 tions in the Poets and Fabulists of other nations. .Ml sing 
 the praises of the past, and lament the degeneracy of the 
 present. 
 
 The same opinion, somewhat modified, is entertained by 
 numbers at the presenl day. We meel with men both in 
 
 the old world and tin- now, who think there are no men 
 now, either in church or state, to he compared with lie 
 
 worthies of other days. Their forefathers were giants, both 
 
 7 
 
intellectually and morally, compared with us ; and we are 
 but pigmies compared with them. 
 
 2. The opinion that things are stationary is not so ancient ; 
 yet we meet with it in writings of great antiquity. It is 
 advocated by one of the speakers in the Book of Ecclesias- 
 tes. "The thing that hath been," says he, "is that which 
 shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be 
 done, and there is no new thing under the sun." We meet 
 with the same sentiment in the Roman Poet Manlius. 
 
 "The world is still the same, and still the same shall be : 
 That which our Grandsires saw, our Sons shall see." 
 
 And still we meet with men who regard all hopes of 
 better days as fallacious, and all schemes or efforts for the 
 elevation of our race as visionary. " You cannot alter the 
 nature of man," say they, "or change essentially the state 
 of society." 
 
 3. The doctrine of Progress is comparatively modern, 
 and is regarded by many with suspicion and dread. Yet 
 it has many friends, and their number is daily increasing. 
 It ranks among its disciples and advocates the best and 
 noblest spirits of the age. Our leading Philosophers and 
 Statesmen acknowledge its truth, and employ their talents 
 and influence in its favor. The most active spirits among 
 all classes, in every civilized nation, are making the doc- 
 trine of Progress the leading article of their creed. It has 
 won the hearts of our sweetest poets, and through its in- 
 spirations they have enriched our literature, with a number 
 of the most touching and enchanting melodies that ever 
 cheered or charmed the heart of man. 
 
 Railing their voices in a chant sublime, 
 They sing the glories of the coming time, 
 When error shall decay, and truth grow strong, 
 And right shall reign supreme, and vanquish wrong. 
 
 There may be a difference of opinion among us as to which 
 of these three doctrines is the true one, but there can be 
 none as to which is the most cheering. The doctrine that 
 
all things are going to decay, — that vice and misery are 
 continually increasing and destined to go on increasing, is 
 truly dismal ; and the doctrine that things are to be forever 
 stationary, is not much better. The doctrine of progress, 
 on the contrary, is full of hope and joy and consolation. 
 
 Nor will there be any difference of opinion among us as 
 to which of these doctrines is the most beneficial in its in- 
 fluence on man's heart and character. It is plain that the 
 influence of the two first cannot be otherwise than injurious. 
 Their tendency is to chill the noblest affections of man's 
 nature, and to convert the patriot and philanthropist into 
 a useless, moody, melancholy croaker. "What inducement 
 has a man to try to improve his garden, if he believe that 
 in spite of all his efforts, it will still remain the same, or get 
 continually worse. And so with regard to the great politi- 
 cal and social garden of our country and the world. If a 
 man beleive that, do what he may, the character and condi- 
 tion of his country and his kind, can never be improved, 
 what encouragement has he to do any thing? But if a man 
 believe that his efforts to promote the improvement and 
 welfare of His country and his kind will be successful, — 
 that tho' they may not accomplish all he could wish, they 
 will still accomplish something ; and that what the labors 
 and sacrifices of one age do not accomplish, the labors and 
 sacrifices of a succeeding age will, he can labor with com- 
 fort and spirit. Our wish is to see every man a patriot 
 and a philanthropist. The patriot and the philanthropist, 
 enlightened and guided by true science, is the noblest 
 character underheaven. And nothing, we imagine, is better 
 calculated to make men patriots and philanthropists, than 
 a hearty belief in the doctrine of eternal progress. If then 
 the doctrine be true, we ought to know it? If there be f:ic\± 
 demonstrating its truth, we ought to be acquainted with 
 them. Our conviction ia that there arc such lads, in infin- 
 ite abundance; and our purpose is to point out a few of 
 them in the present lecture. 
 
And first, there is in man a natural tendency to progress. 
 There are principles in human nature, which render the 
 progress of our race a matter of certainty. 
 
 1. There is, for instance, in man, a natural desire for 
 knowledge, — for knowledge without hounds. This desire 
 for knowledge increases in strength the more it is gratified. 
 It grows with what it feeds on. This insatiable desire for 
 knowledge impels men to all kinds of experiments, and these 
 experiments lead continually to new discoveries, to perpetual 
 progress, in every department of science. 
 
 2. Again ; man's poiver to acquire knowledge, as well as 
 his desire for knowledge, increases with his efforts to acquire 
 it. The mind, like the body, is strengthened by exercise. 
 The understanding, the judgment, the imagination and the 
 memory are all invigorated by use, and better fitted for 
 penetrating the secrets of nature, and unravelling the mys- 
 teries of the universe. 
 
 3. Then every discovery prepares the way for further 
 discoveries, and makes further discoveries more easy. It is 
 with knowledge as it is with money : the man that has no 
 money, finds it hard to get any, especialljA. times like 
 these ; while the man that has plenty, finds it easy to get 
 more. So a man that knows nothing, finds it hard to learn 
 anything ; while the man that knows a great deal, finds it 
 easy to learn a great deal more. 
 
 4. Again, knowledge, like light, is pleasant, while igno- 
 rance, like darkness, is disagreeable ; and the pleasures of 
 knowledge, which, unlike so many other pleasures, never 
 cloy, will lure man onward in search of knowledge, and 
 render still more sure the progress of our race. 
 
 5. Then knowledge is infinitely useful. Knowledge is 
 power. It gives man dominion over the universe. Know- 
 ledge is wealth. It not only discovers the treasures of the 
 earth and the sea, but reveals to him the uses of things, 
 ?nd enables him to turn them to his advantage. Jt turns all 
 nature into wealth. Knowledge is virtue. It reveals to 
 man his duty ; unfolds to him the results of obedience, 
 
weakens the power of temptations to transgression, and 
 thus enables and disposes him to pursue a course of life in 
 accordance with the requirements of virtue and honor. 
 Knowledge is health. It reveals to man the laws of life, and 
 enables him to avoid a thousand dangers to which his un- 
 enlightened neighbors fall. Knowledge tends to improve 
 man's character, and to better his condition in every respect. 
 And the more clearly man sees this, the more eager will 
 he become to make continual progress in knowledge. 
 
 6. Then there is in man a desire for consistency, for har- 
 mony in his views. "When he discerns a great truth, he natu- 
 rally tries to reconcile it with his previous views. If he can- 
 not, he casts his old opinions aside. He cannot rest till his 
 mind is at case with itself. Thus every truth expels old errors, 
 and prepares the way for the entrance of other truths. 
 
 7. All sciences are intimately related, and mutually de- 
 pendent on each other, so that a man cannot properly under- 
 stand one, without a knowledge of several others. A know- 
 ledge of History requires a knowledge of Geography, and a 
 knowledge of Geography a knowledge of Meteorology and 
 AstronomA^A knowledge of Medicine, requires a know- 
 ledge of Pfiysiology and Chemistry, Astronomy requires a 
 knowledge of Mathematics and Geometry. Thus one study 
 necessitates another, and the more a man learns, the more 
 it is necessary for him to learn. Hence, when man has 
 once given himself to the pursuit of science, he is compelled 
 evermore to advance ; and the farther he advances, the 
 farther he desires to advance. 
 
 8. Again, man is never long contented with his condition. 
 However well he may he satisfied when he first experiences 
 the pleasures and advantages of Borne great and happy 
 change, he BOOn begins to wish for something better or for 
 something more. Clergymen may preach contentment as 
 long and as hard as they please, men cannot be content, and 
 they ought not if they could. Novelty, change, is essen- 
 tia] to the enjoyment of life; and the desire for novelty, the 
 
6 
 
 eternal longing after something better, is another principle 
 that tends to secure the progress of our race. 
 
 9. Then there is in man a principle of emulation. Life is a 
 race, and no one likes to be last. Many are anxious to be 
 first, or even with the first. Our neighbor builds a better 
 house, and we must have one as good. His wife gets better 
 furniture, and ours must do the same. And so it is in 
 science, Herschel discovers a new planet, and a thousand 
 astronomers scan the heavens eager to discover another — a 
 second. Kepler detects a new law of the planetary system, 
 and all his cotemporaries try to discover another. And so 
 in the arts, trade, and politics. There is always some one 
 bent on being first, and there are always others unwilling to 
 be second. It is the same with States. All vie with each 
 other in population, wealth and power, and the more ad- 
 vanced States, emulate each other in science, arts and free- 
 dom. And this principle of emulation necessitates still 
 farther the progress of our race. 
 
 10. Again, man has a strong desire to have his children, 
 and his children's children, virtuous and happy. And the 
 longer he lives, the more clearly he sees that he^pnot secure 
 the virtue and happiness of his own offspring, except so far as 
 he can secure the virtue and happiness of the coming gen- 
 erations at large. He sees, he feels, if one man is to be happy, 
 men generally must be happy; that if we neglect the virtue 
 and happiness of others, we sacrifice our own. His wish, 
 therefore, to secure the health, the virtue, the peace, the 
 safety, and the happiness of his offspring, prompts him to 
 labor for the improvement and welfare of the world at large. 
 
 11. And further, there is in man a principle of benevo- 
 Tence, of philanthropy, which impels him to seek the happi- 
 ness of mankind at large on their own account, as well as out 
 of regard to the welfare of his offspring. We are aware that 
 this principle is weaker in some than in others, and that in 
 many it is overpowered and neutralized by inferior propen- 
 sities. Still, it is implanted in all, and in some it is the 
 
ruling power, controling their whole life. And those nobler 
 specimens of humanity are sufficiently numerous and suffi- 
 ciently powerful to shape the future destiny of our race. 
 
 We observe further, that we have progressed in the past. 
 We have progressed in science ; we have progressed in arts ; 
 we have progressed in religion ; we have progressed in every 
 thing conducive to the security and happiness of life. 
 
 1. We have progressed in science. We have progressed 
 in Astronomical science. The knowledge of the ancients 
 with regard to the heavens was very limited. They had 
 observed the stars, the few which could be seen by the 
 naked eye, and had discovered, that a few of them had an 
 appearance and a motion different from the* rest. They had 
 also noticed the peculiar appearance and unusual move- 
 ments of those mysterious bodies which occasionally come 
 within sight, called comets. But beyond this, all that went 
 under the name of Astronomy or Astrology, was a mass of 
 childish fancies and delusions. The majority of the an- 
 cients believed that the stars were living bodies, animated 
 by living souls, and many of them worshiped them as gods. 
 Comets dj;fc|garded as frightful omens, foreboding pesti- 
 lence anSr.|ff An eclipse of the sun or moon would in- 
 spire wholdfciations with the wildest terrors. The stars 
 were supposed to have a mysterious and irresistible influ- 
 ence over a person's character and destiny, and a numerous 
 order of men imposed upon the people, and enriched them- 
 selves, by pretending to derive from an observation of the 
 6tars, a knowledge of future events. The ancient Hebrews 
 believed that the sun and moon and stars were fixed in a 
 solid frame-work, called the firmament, and that they were 
 all at an equal distanec from the earth. The apparent dif- 
 ference of size in the heavenly bodies they believed to be 
 real. They considered the earth the principal part of (lie 
 universe, and looked on all the hosts of heaven as created 
 for the service of its inhabitants. They believed the earth 
 was stationary, resting on pillars or foundations that could 
 
8 
 
 never be moved. In shape they supposed it to be a square, 
 hence they speak continually of its length and breadth, and 
 of its four corners. The difference in the motions oi the 
 planets and the stars led at length to the belief in several 
 concentric firmaments, or spheres, moving within each 
 other, at different rates of speed; but their new conjectures, 
 instead of rendering their theory of the heavens more 
 intelligible, made it more incomprehensible. 
 
 What is the state of Astronomical science now ? Where 
 the ancients saw one star, we, by the aid of the telescope, 
 see a hundred or a thousand. Where they saw nothing 
 more than stars, we see countless suns and solar systems. 
 The motions of the heavens, which to them were inexplica- 
 ble, are now made intelligible to a child. Their four-cor- 
 nered earth we have made into a sphere, and instead of 
 keeping it immoveable, we make it spin on its axis at the 
 rate of a thousand miles an hour, all day and all night 
 long, and find time beside, with the moon fcr its companion, 
 to take a yearly journey round the sun, at the rate of sixty- 
 six thousand miles an hour. We have incre^^d the num- 
 ber of the planets more than five fold, and» n to each 
 its task and its sphere ; while to some ofjBP principal 
 ones we have assigned a number of secondary planets as 
 attendants. By the improvements in Mathematics and 
 Geometry, and the invention of the telescope and its accom- 
 paniments, our modern Astronomers have measured the 
 distances of the planets from the sun, and from each other, 
 ascertained the laws of their motions, defined their orbits, 
 determined their size, their solid contents, and their com- 
 parative density, with a certainty and an exactness truly 
 astonishing. By means of books, maps, diagrams, globes 
 and planetariums, they have made these, and a thousand 
 other discoveries more astonishing still, familiar to vast 
 multitudes, and placed them within the reach of mankind 
 at large. The discovery of astronomical truth, has exploded 
 artronomical error. It has dissipated the maddening and 
 
9 
 
 mischievous delusions of astrology, and brought into gen- 
 eral discredit the old black art of fortune-telling. It has 
 taught us to look on the phenomena of the heavens without 
 terror or anxiety. We no longer see a harbinger of death 
 or desolation in the comet, or a sign of coming troubles in 
 an eclipse. We welcome the lonely w r anderers thro' im- 
 mensity, as harmless and interesting visitors, and court a 
 further acquaintance with them. We look with as little fear 
 on an eclipse of the sun or moon, as on the shades of even- 
 ing. We know their course, we foretell their coming, and 
 gaze on them with pleasure. It is in the darkness of igno- 
 rance and error, that men are agitated and tortured with 
 wild and unnatural terrors; the day-light of science shows 
 us that the ghosts and goblins, that startled us in the dark, 
 are in truth our benefactors and our friends. 
 
 We have made progress in Geographical knowledge; 
 The ancients knew almost as little of the earth as of the 
 heavens. They had no idea of its extent, or of the number 
 and variety of its inhabitants. To the ancient Jews, the 
 land they lived in, and a few neighboring countries, w T ere 
 "the whflfl ■fid," and their inhabitants. " all the nations 
 of the eaim ^Even the Greeks and Romans were ignorant 
 of much thl*greater part of the earth; — ignorant, not only 
 of its various climates, productions and inhabitants, but of 
 its very existence. Of the two great continents of North 
 and South America, of the continent of Australia, of num- 
 erous and vast inhabited regions in Asia and Africa, and 
 even of many and extensive regions in Europe, as well as 
 of a thousand Islands scattered in the Seas, they knew just 
 nothing. Alexander was said to have conquered the world, 
 yet neither he nor his Generals ever taw, much less con- 
 quered, one tenth of it. The Romans fancied themselves the 
 rulers of the world, while hundreds of nations roamed the 
 foresU or inhabited the cities of as many lands, wholly un- 
 conscious of the existence of the proud conquerors. The 
 Romans did not know much even of some of the countries 
 
10 
 
 over which their empire extended. It is amusing to read the 
 monstrous accounts which Procopius, an able historian of 
 the reign of Justinian, gives of Britain, some hundreds of 
 years after its conquest by the Komans. "There is one 
 province of the Island," says this historian, "where the 
 ground is covered with serpents, and the air is such, that 
 no man can inhale it and live. To this desolate region the 
 spirits of the departed are ferried over from the land of the 
 Franks, at midnight. A strange race of fishermen perform 
 the ghastly office, the speech of the dead is distinctly heard 
 by the boatmen: their forms are invisible to the mortal 
 eye ; but their weight makes the keel sink deep in the 
 water." *The Romans had as foolish and ridiculous 
 notions, and gave credit to as monstrous fables, with re- 
 gard to other foreign countries. They believed in races 
 of men of prodigious size and monstrous shapes. They 
 spoke of harpies, griffins, gorgons, hydras, sirens, nymphs, 
 satyrs, and other monstrous creations of a disordered im- 
 agination, as real beings. And this mad mass of miscon- 
 ceptions, with some few particles of science int ermingled, 
 was the Geography of the ancients, 
 
 What is the Geography of the moderns^^Within the 
 last century, our voyagers have repeatedly made the circuit 
 of the globe, exploring every Sea, and almost every Bay. 
 Our travellers have made their way over every continent, 
 and explored almost every Island, climbing mountains, 
 crossing deserts, penetrating forests, exploring volcanoes, 
 tracing the courses of rivers, noting peculiarities of climate, 
 acquainting themselves with a thousand varieties of birds 
 and beasts, insects and reptiles, shrubs and trees, fruits and 
 flowers, and with the leading characteristics of all the races 
 of men by which the earth is peopled. The errors of earlier 
 explorers have been corrected by the researches of later 
 ones, and discovery has followed discovery, until we are at 
 length in possession of information so vast in its extent, 
 and so reliable in its character, that compared with it, the 
 
11 
 
 Geography of our ancestors looks poor and pitiful indeed. 
 There is hardly a mountain of any note, of which we have 
 not measured the height, hardly a sea, of any extent, of 
 which we have not sounded the depth, hardly a river of any 
 importance, of which we have not traced the length. The 
 soil and climate, the vegetables and animals, the geological 
 formation and mineral treasures, the human inhabitants, 
 with their institutions, laws, religions, customs, traditions, 
 literature, of every country, are rapidly coming to light. 
 Regions the most difficult of access, presenting to the trav- 
 eller dangers the most appalling, have been explored. And 
 the march of exploration still goes on. Name a place over 
 which doubt or darkness still hangs, and England will furnish 
 her Franklin, and America her Kane, who, at the risk of 
 life, and of interests dearer than life, will start for the mys- 
 terious spot, and either wrench from darkness her secret, or 
 nobly perish in the attempt. 
 
 While common Geography presents us with a description 
 of the earth's surface, giving us in detail an account of its 
 islands and continents, its mountains and valleys, its rivers 
 and seas, jfltffcimals and vegetables, &c, there is another 
 science, Pineal Geography, which, while it takes note of 
 all these details, and explains their relations to each other, 
 treats of numerous other territorial phenomena, and unfolds 
 the general philosophy of our globe. It treats of the dis- 
 tribution of magnetism in our planet, with relation to its 
 intensity and direction. , It depicts in broad outlines the 
 even or irregular configuration of continents, the relations 
 of superficial area, and the distribution of continental masses 
 in the two hemispheres, and the influence of this distribution 
 on climate, and on the meteorological modifications of the 
 atmosphere. It defines the character of mountain chains, 
 determines the mean height of continents above the level of 
 the sea, the position of the centre of gravity of their volume, 
 and the relations of the highest summits of mountain chains, 
 to the mean elevation of thoir crests, or to their proximity 
 
12 
 
 to the sea shore. It considers volcanoes and their action ; 
 describes the strife of water with the land ; indicates the 
 features possessed in common by all the great rivers in the 
 upper and lower portion of their course, and in their mode 
 of bifurcation when their basins are enclosed. It speaks of 
 currents in the air and ocean, and their influence on climate. 
 Explains the difference of climate in islands and continents, 
 in continents of different shapes, in different parts of the 
 same continent, and in islands of different sizes and positions. 
 It designates the latitude or geographical position of the 
 zones, or districts, in whose plains each organic form attains 
 its highest developement ; shows us organic beings as they 
 are distributed in groups throughout the globe, according 
 to their different relations of latitude, and elevation above 
 the level of the sea, and to climate. In short, it is the phi- 
 losophy of all terrestrial phenomena. This science has grown 
 to large dimensions, and is every day expanding. For its 
 interesting and useful revelations we are entirely indebted to 
 the researches of modern philosophers. The ancients hardly 
 dreamed of such a science. . 
 
 We have made progress in the iniportantPiBJpces which 
 treat of the structure and functions of the human body, of 
 the relations in which it stands to external nature, and of 
 the laws of life, and health, and happiness. These subjects 
 appear to have engaged the attention of the ancients from 
 the earliest times, and we have the results of their investi- 
 gations in the writings of Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen. 
 The amount of truth, however, to be found in those writings 
 is very small, and is mixed with an immense amount of error. 
 The ancients had not an opportunity of studying the human 
 system to much advantage. It is impossible to gain a know- 
 ledge of Anatomy and Physiology without dissection, and to 
 the ancients this was forbidden. Among the Jews it was 
 unlawful to touch the dead body of a human being. The 
 o;iHv Christians considered the dissection of human bodies 
 for me purpose of gaining a knowledge of the human 
 
13 
 
 system, as offensive both to God and man. Tertullian and 
 Augustine, two of the leading Fathers of the Church, de- 
 nounce those physicians who dissect human bodies for the 
 purpose of acquiring physiological and medical knowledge, 
 as human butchers and man-haters, and threaten them with 
 excommunication and damnation. Even the more philo- 
 sophical Greeks and Romans were infected with this mis- 
 chievous superstition. The ancient Romans held it unlawful 
 to look on the viscera of a dead body, or even to touch the 
 dead. The order of men who were employed by them to 
 dispose of the dead, were compelled to live outside of the 
 city. The Greeks appear to have been somewhat more 
 rational, but even they had a tremendous prejudice against 
 dissection. When Hippocrates visited Democritus, and 
 found him surrounded with the remains of various beasts 
 which he was dissecting, he felt it necessary to apologize 
 for taking so great a liberty, even with the bodies of animals. 
 '•These animals," says he, "which thou secst, I dissect, not 
 from any disregard of God, their makeiv : but from a desire 
 to find out the nature of the gall and bile. If he was so much 
 afraid of censure for dissecting the bodies of beasts,' 1 says 
 Harkcwell, "how mcuh greater must his fear of blame have 
 been, if lie had been found dissecting the bodies of men.'' 
 Hence neither Hippocrates, the most celebrated physician 
 among the Greeks, nor Galen, the most renowned physician 
 among the Romans, appears ever to have ventured on (his un- 
 popular practice. They dissected sheep and dogs, and, to come 
 as near to man as they durst, they are said, at times, to have 
 jected apes; but superstition, or a dread of popular fury, 
 would allow them to go no further. They remained ignorant, 
 in consequence, of some of the most simple facts in human 
 physiology. The very wisest of them did not even know 
 the uumber of bones in the human skeleton. How little then 
 
 must they have known of the veins and arteries, tin 1 muscles 
 
 at) I nerves, ami of the structure and functions <>i the great 
 
 vital organs? The ideas of the ancients with regar ! to the 
 
14 
 
 causes of diseases were generally fanciful. Some diseases 
 they attributed to the Gods, and some to demons ; some to 
 the influence of the moon, and others to the influence of the 
 stars. ''Hippocrates," says Dr. Lardner, "had so strong a 
 faith in the influence of celestial bodies on animated beings, 
 that he expressly reccommends that no physician should be 
 trusted who is ignorant of astronomy. Galen -agreed with 
 Hippocrates, especially with regard to the influence of the 
 moon." Madness was attributed to lunar influences exclu- 
 sively, hence a madman was called a lunatic, the Latin word 
 for moon-struck. Some diseases were charged on witchcraft, 
 and others on priestly maledictions. As usual when the intel- 
 lect is undeveloped, men imagined causes of natural phenom- 
 ena, and generally imagined anything rather than the right 
 ones. In early times, men had neither the mental habits, nor 
 the freedom from prejudice, nor the opportunities and means, 
 necessary to enable them to discover the true causes of natural 
 phenomena ; so that if in the writings of the ancients, we 
 meet with but little science, and an immense amount of error 
 and absurdity, it is exactly what we had reason to expect. 
 
 Men have now outgrown to a great extent the prejudices 
 and weaknesses of their ancestors, and acquired the habits 
 necessary for scientific investigation. They practise dissec- 
 tion withont misgiving, and make experiments without re. 
 serve. They shrink from nothing that. promises an increase 
 of physiological knowledge, provided it involves no crime 
 or cruelty. Their discoveries are, in consequence, innumer- 
 able. They have not only numbered with accuracy the bones 
 of the human skeleton, but analysed every fibre of the mus- 
 cles, traced every ramification of the veins and arteries, and 
 almost every filament of the nervous system. They have 
 examined the structure, and ascertained the functions, of 
 every organ, whether of life, or sense, or motion. While 
 some have studied the eye, others have studied the ear. 
 While one has given his life to the investigation of the lungs, 
 another has spent his days in the examination of the heart, 
 
15 
 
 and others in observations and experiments on the skin, the 
 stomach or the brain. Thousands of men, of the highest in- 
 tellectual powers, have for ages past, made the enlargement 
 and the diffusion of physiological science, the great object 
 and business of their lives. The success which has crowned 
 their efforts is as vast as it is cheering. After having gained 
 an acquaintance with the heavens and the earth, we have 
 gained, at length, thro' their assistance, a better acquaintance 
 with ourselves. We know of what we are made, and by what 
 we must be sustained. We know to what sources 'we must 
 look for health, and from what quarters we may expect dis- 
 ease. We understand the relations of our physical system to 
 food and drink, to air and exercise, to muscular and mental 
 toil, to light and liberty, to pain and pleasure, to society and 
 solitude, to varieties of season and climate, to the anxieties 
 of gambling and rash speculation, and to the peaceful pur- 
 suits of honest industry. We know something of the in- 
 fluence of the body over the mind, and of the mind over the 
 body. Ten thousand things we know of the human system 
 and its relations, of which the wise men of antiquity never 
 dreamed. And our knowledge of ourselves is constantly in- 
 creasing. Almost every day reveals to us some new wonder, 
 and feasts the mind with some new pleasure. . And the 
 benefits of this enlargement of physiological science are be- 
 ginning to show themselves among all classes. Men and 
 women are getting rid of their 'superstitious notions about 
 lunar and planetary influences; about the power of witches, 
 priests and demons ; as well as of their extravagant expec- 
 tations from doctors, drugs and drams. They are learning 
 that life and health and enjoyment are more in their own 
 power, — that they are governed by natural and unchanging 
 laws, and that they arc to be secured by obedience to these 
 laws, and by obedience to these laws alone. And many arc 
 reducing this knowledge to practice. Hence deadly exces- 
 ses of various kinds are giving place to habits of temperance 
 and sobriety. Cleanliness is making war on filth. Farmers 
 
16 
 
 are draining their swamps. Sensible Town Councils are 
 suppressing nuisances. Builders are making their houses 
 larger, and allowing the inhabitants room to breathe. The 
 term of human life is gradually lengthening. Some of the 
 deadliest forms of disease are disappearing. Knowledge is 
 proving itself to be health and enjoyment, as well as power; 
 and under its guidance men are marching, slowly it is true, 
 and often irregularly, but still marching, to freedom, to 
 virtue and to happiness. 
 
 There is another science, Geology, which treats of the 
 natural history of the earth, and seeks, by an examination 
 of its crust, to determine questions with regard to its age 
 and origin, and the changes through which it has passed. It 
 would not be correct to say that in ancient times this science 
 had no existence, for there were men two thousand years 
 ago, who had made observations and collected important 
 facts with regard to the natural history of the earth, which 
 really deserved the name of science. The science was, how- 
 ever, in its feeblest infancy. The rapid and extensive 
 spread of a new superstition peculiarly hostile to scientific 
 pursuits, stifled the new-born science for many centuries. 
 Of late it has escaped from the hands of its enemy, and been 
 nurtured and cherished by its friends, and it has grown and 
 expanded in the most wonderful manner. 
 
 The ideas of the ancients with regard to the age, the 
 origin, and the natural history of the earth were various, 
 and often very ridiculous. Some believed it was made out 
 of nothing, about six thousand years ago : others believed it 
 to have existed from eternity, in much the same condition 
 as that in Avliich we see it at present. Some thought it had 
 been made out of water, souie from atoms, and some that it 
 had been hatched from a huge egg. All these theories Geo- 
 logy has exploded. It has proved that the world lias existed 
 for countless millions of ages, — that for an immeasurable 
 length of time it had no inhabitants, — that its first inhabi- 
 tants were of quite different orders from its present inhabi- 
 
17 
 
 tants, — that it has been repeatedly peopled by new orders 
 of beings, each coming gradually and slowly into existence, 
 each occupying the earth for an indefinite but inconceivably 
 protracted period, and each passing slowly away, to make 
 room for others. Geology has exploded the fables of a 
 Golden Age, when the inferior animals were supposed to live 
 together in peace, and death to have no existence in the 
 earth. It has also revealed to us many facts with regard to 
 the inexhaustible mineral treasures with which the crust of 
 the earth is fraught, the order in which the various minerals 
 are found, the laws of subterranean currents, and a number 
 of other important truths tending to promote the happiness 
 of mankind. 
 
 The sciences in which the ancients made the greatest pro- 
 ficiency, were Mathematics and Geometry ; yet Euclid and 
 Archimedes were but children, compared with many of the 
 Mathematicians and Geometricians of the present age. 
 
 Another science in which the ancients made considerable 
 proficiency was that of Mechanics ; yet the difference be- 
 tween the state of Mechanical science among the ancients, 
 and the state of that science at the present day, is almost in- 
 finite; and the number of useful mechanical inventions at 
 present employed in the service of man, compared with the 
 number employed by the ancients, is as a thousand to one. 
 
 Some of the ancients devoted much attention to Natural 
 History, or to the study of plants and animals ; and consider, 
 ing the disadvantages under which they labored, they made 
 considerable proficiency in this interesting science. But 
 where they were acquainted with one plant or animal, we 
 arc acquainted with fifty or a hundred. This is not all. In Na. 
 Imal History, as well as in other departments of science, the 
 ancients were constantly mixing fables with facts, and crow d- 
 ing their catalogues of plants and animals with specimen^ 
 which had no existence. Our modern students in Natural 
 History, have not only discovered a world of interesting and 
 useful facts unknown to the ancients, but have exploded a 
 
18 
 
 multitude of repulsive and mischievous fictions, by which the 
 credulous and superstitious minds of the ancients were 
 abused. 
 
 Natural philosophy too, is a department of science in 
 which some of the ancients labored considerably, and we 
 have the principal results of their researches in the writings 
 of Aristotle and Pliny. But what those noble ancients 
 really knew of natural philosophy was exceedingly little - 
 and as usual, the little truth they discovered was mixed with 
 twice or thrice its amount of error. The truth is, the ancients 
 did not so much investigate, as imagine; they did not so 
 much examine, as believe. They were too much like child- 
 ren; and childishness is the leading characteristic, the ap- 
 propriate designation, of a great proportion of all they 
 have left us, whether on subjects of natural history or 
 natural philosophy. Nearly all that we know of Meteor- 
 ology, Electricity, Magnetism, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, 
 Optics, and the laws of sound, is the result of investigations 
 made by men of the last two centuries. 
 
 And so with regard to chemistry. Nearly all that we know 
 of the nature and properties of natural bodies, — of their 
 action on each other, — of their constituent elements, — of 
 the effects of their decomposition and recombination, and of 
 the laws of material substances generally, we owe to the 
 labors of the moderns. The ancients supposed there were but 
 four elementary bodies, earth, air, fire and water. The mod- 
 erns have already discovered from fifty to sixty. They have 
 also discovered that what the ancients regarded as elemen- 
 tary bodies, are not such. Water thay have found to be a 
 compound of oxygen and hydrogen, air a compound of oxygen 
 and nitrogen, earth a compound of various elements, and fire 
 no element at all, but the result of chemical action in various 
 kinds of bodies. Alchemy, to which the ancients gave so 
 much attention, and which bore much the same relation to 
 Chemistry that Astrology did to Astronomy, the moderns 
 have exploded. Its boastful pretensions with regard to the 
 
19 
 
 discovery of a universal solvent, or philosopher's stone, 
 which was to enable them to convert the baser metals into 
 gold and silver, and the Elixir vitce, which was to enable 
 them to cure and prevent all disease, and secure to man im- 
 mortality on earth v are all regarded now as the foolish talk 
 of children. Tho' Chemistry has not done all that Alchemy 
 pretended to do, it has conferred innumerable benefits on 
 mankind. It has aided every other science, promoted the 
 improvement of every useful and ornamental art, and con- 
 tributed in various ways to the health, the power, the refine- 
 ment and the comfort of mankind. 
 
 Philology, or the science which explains the origin of lan- 
 guages, their history, the changes they have undergone, their 
 relations to each other, and their bearing on the origin and 
 history of nations, their religions, customs and laws, is also 
 of modern origin. Ethnology, or the science which relates 
 to the various races of men, their likenesses and differences, 
 their origins and histories, and their settlement in various 
 parts of the earth, is the same. And so with almost every 
 other science. Nine-tenths, or ninety-nine hundredths, of all 
 that we know, whether of ourselves or of nature generally, 
 is the result of modern investigation. The marks, the 
 signs of progress are on all. 
 
 Again ; we have made progress in matters of government. 
 The earliest governments of which we read, were all despotic. 
 The king was absolute; his word was law. He disposed of 
 the property and lives of his subjects at pleasure. His per- 
 son was sacred, for lie was God's anointed ; and to speak 
 evil of him, or to resist his power, was death, and damnation 
 too. The Greeks and Romans sometimes abolished kinershiD 
 but they never established a (democratic republic, or a ration- 
 al system of representative government. 
 
 The government of the family too, in early times, was 
 despotic. The power of the husband over his wife, and of 
 the father over his child, was/unlimited. The wife and child 
 were both property. The father sold his daughter, and the 
 
20 
 
 husband bought his wife. If a man did not like his wife, 
 the law permitted him to turn her away, or suggested a 
 method by which, under the form of a trial, he might remove 
 her out of existence. If a man wished for more wives than 
 one, and was able to purchase or steal them, he was at liberty 
 to have any number up to a hundred or a thousand. The 
 woman had no choice with regard to her husband ; she was 
 wholly at the disposal of her Father. Yet she was required 
 to obey her husband in all things, and to leave to him the 
 disposal both of herself and her children. It was only in 
 peculiar cases that she was allowed to hold property, and 
 she was denied the pleasures and advantages of a rational 
 education. 
 
 So with regard to tl*B father and the child. The father 
 could either sell his children into slavery, or put, them to 
 death. Some legal restrictions were at length laid on the 
 power of the father, but they were neither adapted nor per- 
 haps intended, really to deprive him of his fearful power. 
 So long as laws are made and administered by husbands and 
 parents alone, it is vain, in rude and uncivilized times, to 
 expect that justice will be done to wives and children. 
 
 How do we stand now with regard to those matters ? All 
 is changed. The doctrine of the divine right of kings is ex- 
 ploded, and rulers are regarded as but men. If they raise 
 their heads too high, the people cut them off. If they refuse 
 to rule according to law, the people banish them. Sooner 
 than allow their rulers to treat them with insolence, every 
 civilized nation on earth would send their rulers to heaven, 
 or somewhere else. They may allow their rulers to retain 
 the old titles of king or emperor, but not the power or pri- 
 vileges which those names implied in earlier times. Some 
 of the nations in Europe, tho' monarchies in name, arc more 
 than one half republican in reality. The tendency of all is 
 to a virtual democracy, and in some that blessing is already 
 realized. 
 
 Domestic government also is changed for the better. 
 The power of the father to torture or destroy his son has 
 
21 
 
 been long since taken away in all civilized nations. Sons 
 have now rights as well as fathers, and both the laws and 
 public sentiment guard those rights. Even Daughters have 
 rights. They are not yet placed on a level with their 
 brothers, but the father can no longer force his daughter 
 to marry the man she hates, nor can he keep her from marry- 
 ing 4 the m'an she loves. The unreasonable creatures try 
 sometimes, but .they cannot do it. 
 
 Nor can the husband do exactly as he likes with his wife, 
 unless, like a husband of the model kind, he never chooses 
 to do any thing but what is exactly right. He cannot have 
 her, in the first place, without her consent; and when he has 
 gained her consent, he cannot turn her adrift without a just 
 cause, duly proved in open Court. He cannot take more 
 than one with impunity, unless he go a little further West, 
 and cross the Rocky Mountains ; and even then he might not 
 be allowed to have every thing his own way for ever. If 
 the wife be grievously ill-treated, the laws grant the right 
 of divorce. They even acknowledge her right to property, 
 and provide for her education, to some extent. And the 
 spirit of the age is becoming daily more and more in her 
 favor. 
 
 "We have made progress in religion. The most civilized 
 nations of antiquity regarded as sacred, opinions the most 
 absurd and blasphemous; and they practised as religious 
 duties, deeds the most cruel and revolting. The beings or 
 phantoms that they worshipped as Gods, were frequently 
 remarkable for nothing so much as vice and cruelty. And 
 what they believed thoir Gods were accustomed to do, they 
 naturally enough supposed it lawful for themselves to do. 
 Bacchus was a drunkard, Mercury a thief, Mars a murderer, 
 and Jove a brute; and why should not tlwy have license to 
 be the same ? 
 
 Most of the religions of antiquity required human sacri- 
 fices. A father was required to sacrifice his son, or to offer 
 
22 
 
 his daughter as a burnt offering. Laws were regarded as 
 divine, which sanctioned the grossest crimes ; and if we may 
 believe the histories which the ancient Jews have transmit- 
 ted to us respecting their fathers, polygamy, incest, concu- 
 binage, and even more revolting vices, were practised by 
 their best and wisest men. 
 
 We grant that many of the religions of the present day 
 are foolish and demoralizing enough, but they are no longer 
 the religions of the most advanced of our race. They are 
 the religions of the unthinking and unreasoning only. The 
 better portions of mankind have outgrown them. 
 
 We have progressed in the arts. We will say nothing of 
 the fine arts, though we think it might be easily demonstra- 
 ted, that at no former period were the arts of sculpture and 
 painting carried to such perfection as in modern times. 
 It is past dispute that there is no comparison between the 
 oldest specimens of painting and sculpture, and the produc- 
 tions of later times. The specimens of ancient Egyptian 
 and Assyrian art resemble the specimens which we see on 
 the Buffalo robes brought down to us by the Omahas and 
 Pawnees. As to music, the improvements which have taken 
 place in it, are incalculable. What it was in earlier ages, 
 among the Egyptians, the Jews, the earlier Greeks and 
 Romans, as well as among our early German and Celtic an- 
 cestors, one may judge from what it is now among the native 
 Indians. What it is now, whether one regard the science or 
 the art — the endless variety and diversified powers of music- 
 al instruments, or the wonderful perfection to which that 
 most charming of all musical organs has been carried, the 
 voice of man and woman, would take a musical philosopher 
 to describe. Perhaps the best way to impress ourselves with 
 the immeasurable progress which we have made in music, 
 would be to spend a morning in listening to a Pawnee drum 
 and its vocal accompaniment, and the evening in attending 
 a joint concert got up by Julien, Ole Bull and Jenny Lind. 
 
 But it is of what are called the useful arts, including the 
 
23 
 
 common arts of life, which are hardly dignified with the 
 name of arts, that we would particularly speak. Here our 
 progress has been not only vast and rapid, but of a nature 
 that all can understand and appreciate. 
 
 Take first the art of travelling. Our first progenitors 
 trudged on foot, thro' uncleared thickets, and undrained 
 swamps, and over unbridged streams; and the man of 
 swiftest foot was the courier or messenger of his tribe. 
 Their posterity tamed the ass, the camel and the horse, thus 
 doubling their speed, and leaving the swift-footed runner 
 panting wearily behind. On rivers, lakes, and narrow seas 
 they came, in course of ages, to paddle the primitive canoe. 
 Another long succession of ages passed, and man invented 
 sails, and pressed the winds into his service. On land he 
 rumbled along in his rude wagon, drawn by the slow- footed 
 ox. A few centuries pass, and he invents the chariot, and 
 harnesses the horse, and drives along, where the roads will 
 permit, at the rate of four or five miles an hour. Then 
 came, in slow succession, the old stage coach with wooden 
 springs ; the improved stage coach with leathern springs ; 
 the patent flying coach with metal springs; the mail, with 
 relays of horses, change of drivers, and stated times of 
 departure and arrival, and better roads, and bridges over 
 streams, and a man traveled fifty, sixty, or a hundred miles 
 a day. He improves his ships, and crosses the widest oceans, 
 making five or six knots an hour. And thus things stood 
 when we were young. IIow stand they now? Oar roads 
 are iron, our horses iron ; and we travel at our ease, in 
 cushioned chairs, with book or newspaper in hand, at the 
 rate of thirty, forty, and in some cases, sixty and seventy 
 miles an hour. Forty years ago it took three weeks, some- 
 times, to pass from Liverpool to Dublin. Now you perform 
 the voyage in steamships in six or eight hours, We lime 
 mastered the winds and the waves. We travel up the rapid 
 streams of the Mississippi and Missouri, faster than our 
 fathers could travel down them. We transport our mer- 
 
24 
 
 chandise as rapidly as ourselves. The plodding pack-horse, 
 and the heavy lumbering wagon, and the snail-paced canal 
 boat, have transferred their charge to the steam-boat and 
 the lightning train, and disappeared. Fifty years [ago, 
 the man who undertook to travel 200 or 300 miles, made 
 his will before starting, and took a long and sad farewell of 
 all he left behind. Men now take such journeys daily, and 
 after doing their business, come home to breakfast the next 
 morning. -, 
 
 As another instance, take the art of writing. Our earlier 
 ancestors, if they wrote at all, wrote slowly on lead, or on the 
 rock, with pens of iron. Their words were pictures. Let- 
 ters they had none. Letters came, however, at length, and 
 men wrote more rapidly, on wax, on bark, on parchment, 
 and on leaves of plants. At length paper was invented, 
 and writing became easier and more rapid still, and books 
 could then be had by the very rich. But we stop not here. 
 Man's course is ever onward. He invents the printing 
 press, and writes ten thousand words at once by one strong 
 pull of his arm. The man is suspected of dealing with the 
 devil, he produces books so fast, as if any devil with common 
 sense, would ever help a respectable printer. Books now 
 are multiplied by thousands. Presses work everywhere. — 
 But the demand for books increases, and it must be met, — 
 The power that had been made to drag the railway cars 
 and impel the steamships is set to work the printing press, 
 and it works it admirably. A man now can print in a day, 
 what twenty men could not have written in a life-time in 
 the days of our fathers. 
 
 Take as another example, the art of correspondence. Ou r 
 forefathers sent messengers; we send messages. They 
 walked; we fly. They gave signals from mountain to moun- 
 tain by night fires; we talk to each other over islands and 
 continents, and across seas and oceans, by lightning. The 
 lightning Las been taught to speak and write, and messages 
 from New York to New Orleans, and from Europe to Amer- 
 
25 
 
 ica, which it would once have taken the courier or the ship 
 six weeks or six months to carry, and the tamed lightning 
 transmits in the twinkling of an eye. 
 
 We have made progress in Agriculture, both as a science 
 and an art. We know more of soils and manures, of the re- 
 lations of vegetation to the air, of the capabilities and laws 
 of improvement in stock and fruit and grain, and of every 
 thing concerning agriculture, than our fathers knew. And 
 we have better methods of doing our work. We have better 
 implements. Our fathers reaped with the sickle, at the rate 
 of half or quarter an acre a day. We reap with horses and 
 machinery, at the rate of an acre or two an hour. They 
 trod out their grain with oxen, then beat it out with the 
 flail; we thrash with machinery, a bushel a minute. They 
 sowed with the hand, we with the ten-mouthed drill. 
 
 We have progressed in manufactures. 
 
 Take the art of spinning for instance. Our grandmothers 
 used to spin a thread at a time, and thought a pound of yarn 
 a good day's work. We spin by steam, two thousand threads 
 at a time, and a hundred men can spin yarn enough for a 
 nation. 
 
 In the days of our fathers, the weaver threw his shuttle 
 with the hand; now it is thrown by steam. Steam does 
 almost every thing. It thrashes grain, grinds flour. It 
 bores mountains, digs wells, and quarries stone. It saws 
 lumber, works forges, makes shoes, knits socks, rocks cradles, 
 makes pills and prints books. 
 
 The beneficial results of this progress in science and art, 
 in Government and religion, are innumerable. 
 
 We have fewer famines than our ancestors, and those 
 which we have are less severe. We produce more food. 
 We are more provident, and keep more on hand: thus making 
 the surplus productions of one year, supply the deficiency 
 of another. Nations have more commercial intercourse 
 with each other, so that the abundance of one country is 
 
26 
 
 more easily obtained to supply the wants of others. No- 
 thing like the famines of antiquity has ever afflicted this 
 country, it is probable that it has never once entered into your 
 minds to fear a calamity, which, in other lands, and in less 
 favored times, used often to embitter, with its pangs and ter- 
 rors, the lives of our ancestors. 
 
 We have fewer wars than our forefathers, and those we 
 have, are less destructive. We have fewer kings, and those 
 which remain cannot so easily engage their subjects in war 
 as formerly. Men are getting wiser, so that war is coming 
 to be a game that kings cannot so easily play at as for- 
 merly. 
 
 There are fewer great conflagrations than formerly. Cities 
 are better built, and in most countries there are better 
 means of extinguishing fires, or checking their ravages. 
 
 We have fewer visitations of the plague, and those we 
 have are much less severe. 
 
 We are less troubled with superstition than formerly. 
 Many horrible superstitions which used to torment the souls 
 of our ancestors have disappeared, and those which remain 
 are confined chiefly to the uneducated portions of society. 
 We have no more any trials or executions for witchcraft. 
 Less than two hundred years ago the people of New Eng- 
 land were hanging and burning their neighbors wholesale 
 on charges of witchcraft, and the whole country was tortured 
 with the most horrible and maddening fears. There was 
 scarcely a family that felt itself secure. Those who were 
 not afraid of being plagued or destroyed by the devil and 
 the witches, were in danger of being executed by the 
 authorities on charges of witchcraft, and all the more in 
 danger for not believing in the thing. Things were as bad 
 in other countries. In many cities of Germany six hundred 
 persons were burnt, or hung, or otherwise executed, annually) 
 on charges of witchcraft. In the town of Geneva five hun- 
 dred persons were burned alive in two years. Cumanus 
 
27 
 
 ( 
 
 burned forty-one poor women in one province of Italy, and 
 Sprenger, in Germany, burned a number which cannot be 
 ascertained. The more they burned, the more they found 
 to burn; until it became a common prayer with women in 
 the humbler walks of life, that they might never live to 
 grow old. It was sufficient to be old and poor, to insure 
 death at the stake or on the scaffold. 
 
 The old were not, however, the only victims to this hor- 
 rible delusion. Young girls, and men and women in the 
 prime of life were frequently sacrificed. Whole families, 
 fathers, mothers, and children, were burnt together. The 
 panic became so severe at times, that there were not judges 
 enough to try the cases, nor dungeons sufficient to hold 'the 
 prisoners. • N 
 
 The same melancholy delusions worked similar mischiefs 
 in England and Scotland. Besides vast numbers who were 
 publicly executed, many women lost their lives, in every 
 part of the country, without being brought to trial at all, 
 from the injuries received at the hands of the people. Life 
 became so intolerable to many, who were never brought be- 
 fore a court, that they actually confessed themselves guilty 
 of witchcraft, for the purpose of getting themselves put out 
 of their misery. Sir George Mackenzie, Lcrd Advocate of 
 Scotland, himself a believer in witchcraft, mentions several 
 such cases. He says, "I went to examine some women 
 who had confessed, and one of them told me, under secrecy, 
 that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but being 
 a poor creature who worked for her meat, she saw, that 
 having been defamed for a witch, she should starve, for no 
 person after that would give her meat and lodging, and thai 
 all men would heather and set dogs at her; and that there- 
 fore she desired to be out of the world; and with that she 
 wept most bitterly." 
 
 One way of ascertaining whether people were witches or 
 not, was to throw them into deep waters. If they Sink, it was 
 taken as a proof that tbey were not witches; but then the 
 
28 
 
 poor creatures weie drowned. If they did not sink, it was 
 considered proof conclusive that they were witches, and they 
 were accordingly destroyed. Guilty or not guilty the result 
 was death. 
 
 People were charged with witchcraft on the most mon- 
 strous grounds, and convicted on the most ridiculous testi- 
 mony. The testimony against some was that they had 
 made their neighbors' cattle barren, or their milch cows dry ; 
 against others that they afflicted their neighbors' children 
 with mysterious pains, or incurable diseases. If persons 
 were ready to swear that such a person was afflicted, or such 
 a mau's cattle ill, and that the unfortunate person at the bar 
 * was a witch, and supposed to be the cause of the calamity, 
 it was enough. Two proor old women at Constance were 
 put to the torture, and then convicted and burned, on a charge 
 of having raised a tempest. For a period of thirty-nine 
 years the average number of persons who were executed on 
 such charges in Scotland alone, was two hundred annually, 
 or upwards of seven thousand altogether. As late as 1664, 
 Sir Matthew Hale, so renowned for his incorruptibility and 
 piety, condemned two women to the stake as witches; and 
 the last execution on a charge of witchcraft took place in 
 England as late as the year 1716. At that time a woman 
 and hor daughter, the daughter only nine years of age, were 
 hanged on a charge of selling their souls to the Devil, and 
 raising a tempest by pulling off their stockings and making 
 a lather of soap. Now that Science has dissipated these hor- 
 rible delusions, we look back on the frightful and monstrous 
 tragedies enacted by our forefathers, with astonishment, hor- 
 ror and pity. 
 
 Our ancestors were great believers in fairies, and mothers 
 frequently imagined that their children had been carried off 
 by the mischievous elves, and others left in their place. But 
 how seldom we hear of a changeling now. 
 
 Fifty years ago there was not a town or village in the old 
 world without its haunted houses, where ghosts of murdered 
 
29 
 
 men and women made dreadful noises, frightening almost to 
 death or madness, those who were rash or unfortunate 
 enough to pass a night in them. This plague also has gradu- 
 ally diminished as natural science has made its way among 
 the people. Neither witches, ghosts, nor devils, seem to 
 like the light of science. 
 
 We have fewer revolting kinds of punishment than for- 
 merly. Burning men at the stake, breaking them on the 
 wheel, rending thern in pieces by horses, hanging or nailing 
 them on crosses, and even the lesser cruelties of maiming 
 and branding, are almost wholly unknown in the present day, 
 except in slave states, and even hanging and branding are 
 less common than they used to be. In the reign of Henry 
 the Eighth, renowned for the murder of so many wives, and 
 for so many quarrels with the popedom, more than seventy 
 thousand persons were hung, many of them on the charge of 
 vagrancy alone. In the present age the reign of an English 
 monarch will hardly be dishonored with a hundredth part 
 that number of executions, tho' the population of the coun- 
 try is three or four times greater. 
 
 We have less religious cruelty than formerly. Persecu- 
 tion for differences of opinion on religious subjects used to 
 be more common than hanging for vagrancy, or burning 
 for witchcraft The Jews stoned or stabbed each other, 
 the Gentiles crucified and burnt the Jews; and both Jews 
 and Gentiles occupied themselves occasionally in destroying 
 the Christians. As soon as the Christians got the power, 
 they began to burn the Gentiles and each other. Arians 
 burnt Athanasians, and Athanasians burnt Arians; Catho- 
 lics burnt Protestants, and Protestants burnt Catholics. 
 Th^n Protestants fell on each other, and church-men mur- 
 dered Independents and IQrsbyterians, and Presbyterians 
 and Congregationalista murdered Baptists and Quakers. 
 Trinitarians murdered Unitarians, and nil the orthod 
 joined together to save the souls, by tormenting and 
 
30 
 
 destroying the bodies, of such as had the happiness or mis- 
 fortune to agree with none of them. The numbers who 
 have been crucified, burnt, torn in pieces, thrown to wild 
 beasts, broken on the rack, hung, beheaded, or slain with 
 the sword, or driven out of the world by torture and starva- 
 tion, for religion's sake, exceeds all calculation. This hor- 
 rible system of butchery for the support and promotion of 
 piety, is now generally abandoned. Persecution has not 
 ceased, but it has assumed a milder form. Instead of de- 
 stroying men's bodies, orthodoxy now contents itself with 
 destroying their reputations. Instead of fining heretics, it 
 only tries to keep them so poor that they shall have nothing 
 with which to pay a fine. Instead of banishing people, it 
 only tries to make the place where they live so hot, that 
 they shall be glad to banish themselves. Instead of send- 
 ing them to the scaffold or the stake, they mercifully hand 
 them over to the dark gentleman with so many vulgar 
 names, to be conveyed to the warmest apartments in his 
 magnificent and gorgeously illumined palace. These, of 
 course, are trifles compared with the portion which misgui- 
 ded zeal and perverted charity would once have dealt out to 
 such as happened to be wiser or better than their neigh- 
 bors. 
 
 Even religion itself is laying aside many of its more 
 obnoxious and revolting doctrines and practices. It was 
 once a common thing to preach of infant damnation, 
 and to refuse to children dying before Baptism, the right 
 of decent burial. It was the custom, not thirty years ago, to 
 preach the horrid doctrines of eternal, unconditional elec- 
 tion and reprobation, the most revolting notions respecting 
 the divine sovereignty and almighty partiality and caprice, 
 impossible theories of the trinity, atonement, original sin, 
 total depravity, supernatural conversion, salvation by faith 
 alone, a literal day of judgment, and all the horrors of a 
 lire and brimstone hell, and eternal and infinite torments, 
 for the greater portion of mankind. It was also the custom 
 
31 
 
 to give such interpretations of the Bible, as made its 
 teachings clash with the revelations of science. Tales of 
 dreadful judgments inflicted on men of unapproved opin- 
 ions, and of miraculous interpositions in behalf of believers 
 of the right stamp, used to abound in religious magazines 
 and newspapers. All such things are gradually becoming 
 less common. Eeligious denominations are also becoming 
 more tolerant and charitable towards each other, and some 
 of them are beginning to show less bitterness towards such 
 as differ from all religious sects. 
 
 If time would permit, it would be easy to show that 
 drunkenness and gambling, frequent as they are, are neither 
 so common nor so fashionable as they once were. For- 
 merly intemperance ruled, and the man w T ho would not get 
 drunk occasionally, was banished from respectable society. 
 Now, Temperance is getting the upperhand, and many, 
 instead of boasting of drunkenness, will hardly acknowledge 
 the charge when preferred against them, but contend that 
 they were only elevated or disguised. 
 
 There is less political corruption than formerly. Not a 
 hundred years ago, offices and honors, and titles and power, 
 and justice, — nay, not justice, but Judgments, in criminal 
 as well as in political and civil suits, were regularly sold 
 in the most powerful nations of Europe. Now, corruption 
 is not only less frequent, but less outrageous. 
 
 There is immensely less serfdom and slavery in the world 
 than formerly. At one time serfdom and slavery were all 
 but universal. Now they are confined to a few countries, 
 and in some of these they are gradually dying out. Where 
 they prevail, they are accompanied with less cruelty than 
 formerly. In no country now would men be permitted, 
 even if they were so disposed, to treat their serfs or slave- 
 as the Ancient Greeks and Romans frequently treated 
 theirs, or even as the Egyptians and the Jews are repre- 
 sented as treating their bondmen and bondwomen. The 
 heart of our common humanity is too tender to tolerate 
 such enormities. 
 
32 
 
 There is immensely less ignorance in the world than for- 
 merly, as well as less crnelty. Not fifteen hundred years 
 ago there were powerful nations, — many powerful nations, 
 who gloried in their ignorance, and made exterminating 
 war on books and learning. Not a thousand years ago 
 there were mighty nations who. were thus proud and 
 boastful of their ignorance and barbarism. Nay, not yet 
 two hundred years ago, historians assure us, that even in 
 England, men of large estates, and filling offices of trust 
 in their own counties, were not only brutally ignorant, 
 but congratulated themselves on their ignorance. About 
 the same time it was the boast of a governor of Virginia, 
 that there were neither common schools nor newspapers 
 in that colony. Science was held in contempt, or regarded 
 with suspicion and dread, by the puritans, on both sides 
 of the Atlantic. A few ages earlier it was difficult to 
 find a man in a whole county that could even read, ex- 
 cept here and there a priest, Even long after the estab- 
 lishment of Protestantism there were numbers of clergy- 
 men who could not even read their prayer books. Now 
 education is becoming general in all the countries of 
 Europe, and here it is all but universal. 
 
 We are far in advance of the ancients in regard to litera- 
 ture. Our literature, I mean our best literature, is more 
 truthful. Of course what the ancients did not know, they 
 could not teach, while the errors which were mingled with 
 their better thoughts, often formed the principal part of their 
 writings. Our literature is more abundant too than that of 
 the ancients. On every subject of importance we have a 
 hundred good works, where they had one. It is more vari- 
 ous also. It treats of a thousand subjects of which they had 
 no conception. It is, besides, more progressive, more re- 
 formatory. And it is more chaste, more pure. The princi- 
 pal poets of antiquity have faults that would not be tole- 
 rated in a poet of the present day. 
 
 We have better works in every department of literature 
 than the ancients had. Wc have better histories and better 
 
 _ 
 
38 
 
 biographies. We have better poetry and better fictions. — 
 We have better works on logic and rhetoric. We have 
 better treatises on science, on morals, on religion, on gov- 
 ernment, and on law. We have better songs and better 
 dramas. Antiquity has nothing to compare with Charles 
 Mackay, or William Shakespeare. Literature is more dif- 
 fused too than formerly. It is cultivated by a far greater 
 number of nations, and by far greater numbers in each 
 nation ; and an infinitely greater number of men and 
 women enjoy the pleasures and advantages of literature. 
 Books are much more numerous than formerly, and much 
 cheaper ; and greater numbers of persons have means to 
 buy, and time to read good books. 
 
 I grant that in some respects the books of some of the 
 ancients can hardly be excelled. There is something in 
 Homer and Virgil, in Horace and Ovid, exquisitely beauti- 
 ful, and indiscribably charming ; and there is something in 
 the speeches of Cicero and Demosthenes irresistibly power- 
 ful. And in Aristotle, and Plato, and Cicero, and Seneca, 
 there is a vast amount both of good sense and beautiful 
 writing. And Herodotus and Xenophon, and Plutarch and 
 Livy, have left us a number of exquisitely finished compo- 
 sitions, call them history or fiction, which you will. It 
 would be false and unjust to deny that the ancients have 
 great excellencies, and excellencies peculiar to themselves. 
 But for truthfulness and variety, and power to elevate 
 and bless mankind, the literature of the ancients is far, — 
 very far behind the better kind of literature of the present 
 day. 
 
 And the farther we go back, the fewer and the poorer the 
 books become. Everything becomes poorer. Government?, 
 laws, religions, arts, — all dwindle. 
 
 If we go back still further, we reach a period when men 
 had no books at all, not even of the poorest kind, — when 
 they had no written language,— no letters, — when sounds 
 had no signs, — when the thought! and feelings, the words 
 
34 
 
 and deeds of men had no record, no memorial, save in the 
 mind, and but seldom there. A period when men had no 
 science, no arts, no monuments, — no Governments, no 
 institutions, no laws, — when they had no homes, no 
 flocks, no fields, — no cultivated grain, or fruits, — when 
 they roamed the forest in savage freedom, gathering acorns, 
 nuts and roots, or ensnaring birds and beasts for food, and, 
 dying, left no trace of their existence behind. 
 
 We go back still farther and there is no man, not even a 
 hunter or a savage. The earth is in possession of the birds 
 and beasts, insects and reptiles ; they are its only inhabi- 
 tants. The sheep has no shepherd, the horse no rider, the 
 dog no master. Among a thousand sounds with which the 
 hills and forests ring, there is no voice of man ; no shout of 
 joy, no song of love, no sound of merry children. The 
 earth, so far as humanity is concerned,is one great solitude. 
 Birds sing, but no ear listens to their songs, flowers bloom 
 but no eye gazes on their beauties ; fruits ripen, but no one 
 tastes their sweetness. 
 
 "Then every flower was born to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. " 
 
 We go still farther back and there are none of our present 
 races of animals. The birds and the beasts with which we 
 are now familiar, all disappear. Instead of the horse, the 
 dog, the sheep, — the dove, the eagle and the lark, huge and 
 unsightly beasts and birds of other races crowd the 
 earth. 
 
 We go still farther back and even these disappear, and 
 there is not a living thing on all the earth. Silence and 
 stillness reign thro' all her realms ; the silence of death, 
 the stillness of the grave. The forests are untrod; the 
 plains untenanted. The hills and the valleys are all deso- 
 late. Not an insect buzzes in the air ; not a reptile crawls 
 upon the ground. There is no life, no voice, no sound of 
 living thing on all the earth. Trees bud and spread their 
 leaves, flowers bloom and fade, winds blow, storms rage, 
 showers Hill and vapors rise, day comes and goes, suns rise 
 
36 
 
 and set, moons wax and wane, stars shine, and seasons 
 change, seas ebb and flow, the lightnings flash, and thun- 
 ders roar, valleys rise, and mountains fall, and fierce convul- 
 sions shake and rend the globe; but no eye gazes on the 
 scene, no ear listens, no heart feels; but one unbroken des- 
 olation broods over all. 
 
 We go still farther back and we reach a period when even 
 vegetation disappears, and nothing but a bare and barren 
 earth remains. The hills and plains have not a tree, a herb, 
 or flower; not a fern, a moss, or a lichen. The Globe is a 
 naked, bald, unvarying waste. The elements rage in fierce 
 eternal conflict; fire-mists and furious tempests sweep 
 along ; all is one scene of tumult, rage, confusion. And 
 thus the earth remained thro' countless, measureless, unim- 
 aginable periods. 
 
 Would we know, then, the progress which the earth and 
 man have made, we must measure the distance from 
 this dreary point " in the far backward and abyss of time, " 
 to the point where now we stand, surrounded with infinite 
 varieties and countless multitudes of living creatures, 
 enriched with the innumerable and invaluable advantages 
 of science and civilization, and all the blessings and endear- 
 ments of peaceful homes and cultivated society. We must 
 calculate the difference between all that is, and the blank 
 and dreary desolation of the far-off past, and this will be 
 the measure of the progress which the earth and man have 
 made. 
 
 And still we progress. 
 
 We progress faster than heretofore. 
 
 We have fewer obstacles to progress. 
 
 We have more helps. 
 
 And greater numbers are engaging in aiding the work 
 of progri 
 
 And progress is still bestowing fresh blessings on our 
 race, thus luring us ever onward. 
 
 Jt is extending the hounds < f Bcien 
 
36 
 
 LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 
 
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 It is elevatinsr man's character. 
 
 It is improving his condition. 
 
 It is promoting peace find charity, and bringing men 
 into closer and happier relations with each other. And it 
 promises ultimately to join all ranks and all nations in 
 bonds of eternal amity. 
 
 There's a good time coming. 
 
 The pen shall supersede the sword, 
 And right, not might, shall be the lord, 
 
 In the good time coming. 
 Worth, not birth, shall rule mankind 
 
 And be acknowledged stronger; 
 The proper impulse has been given ; 
 Wait a little longer. 
 There's a good time coming; a good time coming. 
 Hateful rivalries of creed 
 
 Shall not make their martyrs bleed, 
 In the good time coming. 
 Religion shall be shorn of pride, 
 And virtue shall wax stronger , 
 And charity shall trim her lamp, 
 Wait a little longer. 
 
 Then let us pray, that come it may, 
 
 As come it shall for a' that, 
 When sense and worth, o'er a' the earth 
 
 Shall bear the sway, and a' that, 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 It's coming yet for a' that, 
 When man and man, the wide world o'er 
 
 bhall brothers be, and a' that. 
 
 Amen. 
 
CB I 56 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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